WL101 and Barbell Club Are Changing!

Weightlifting 101 and Barbell Club are changing! First let me outline the purpose of each class and then I will show you the changes we are making.

Weightlifting 101 started way back in 2013. At this time we were a new gym and the first CrossFit gym in Tippecanoe county to offer actual classes and a full time schedule. With CrossFit being so new in the area none of our members had any experience with the Olympic lifts so a class molded around the basics was perfect for what we needed. Times have changed and our athletes have gotten way better so changes are needed.

Barbell Club was started after I became involved in weightlifting as a sport outside of its use in CrossFit. The goal of the team was to be a serious weightlifting team whose members were focused solely on becoming great weightlifters and actually competing in the sport.

With the club some errors were made as time went on. First and most importantly there was no formal process to joining. This wasn’t an issue in the first few years as the club was only a few members. As time has gone on this has become a problem because there is very little expectation put on the athlete when they join, they haven’t been clearly aware of how I expect my team athletes to train and recover. This issue is absolutely not the fault of the athlete but instead a fault of my poor foresight and planning. As the team progressed the threshold to entry should have progressed and that is where I failed. This failure has resulted in people training on the team who were not prepared for the workload and injuries have been the result. These athletes were also not prepared for the commitment to recovery that it takes to train at this level and recover from injury. Again not a fault of the athlete but my fault in not setting the correct expectation.

Here is the plan.

WL101 will be changed to Weightlifting Class. This class will have a 1.0 (more basic) and a 2.0 (more advanced) program. The class has been too basic for too long. We have people who have faithfully attended for a couple years and they need more advanced training and cuing.

Also, starting in August the class will move to two days a week. The Thursday class will remain but we will also include a Saturday class at 9:30am. Each class will be an hour and will include Snatch, Clean and Jerk and variations of these lifts as well as some other strength lifts such as squatting and pressing. They will be structured more like a CrossFit class as in you will be working most of the class and not as slow a pace as the 101 class has been. The second purpose of this change is to give those interested in joining the club the correct coaching, time and programming to reach the standards of the club.

Now for Barbell Club.

This is a serious weightlifting team. That does not mean we are all world class, but this does mean that the people on this team have committed to a different level than the person focused on CrossFit for health. Members on this team have very evolved and challenging goals. The accomplishment of these goals are directly tied to the training atmosphere and team members they train with. Therefore this atmosphere must be preserved and we must have minimum standards to join and benchmarks each athlete must accomplish to stay on the team. These requirements will include range of motion tests as well as minimum strength requirements. Now like I said none of us are expert lifters, so the strength requirements won’t be out of the reach of normal people. However they will be out of the reach of those who are not willing to work extremely hard for the opportunity to be on the team. I don’t really care how much you lift, I care that you understand what it means to be on a team and that you respect the level of work required, in and out of the gym to maintain the spirit of the Uncommon team.

If you are interested in lifting on the team, there will be movement/range of motion standards as well as strength standards posted soon.